BUFFALO, N.Y. — Thursday was International Overdose Awareness Day, an event begun in Australia over 20 years ago and which has been observed in Buffalo since 2016.
The event concluded with an emotionally moving ceremony to remember those who died from overdoses locally, while their family, friends, and members of the public stood by.
The memorial held in front of Old County Hall featured more than 300 placards, bearing the names and in some cases the photos of the deceased, below which appeared the words "Taken Too Soon."
"Every single one of them were taken too soon. Every one of them," Kimberly Tran said as she stood near the placard placed in honor of her brother, Daniel, who died of an overdose in 2002 at the age of 22.
"I should have been starting my first day of my senior year of high school," she recalled. "I was Orchard Park burying my brother instead."
One of many
Daniel Tran's story began like so many others at the outset of what became known as the opioid crisis.
"He had a shoulder injury and he ended up getting prescribed pain killers," his sister said.
It was the first step along a trail that led to the abyss of his addiction.
"He got hooked on them, and once his prescription ran out he started going to the street," she said.
The streets are where drugs have since become even more powerful and more dangerous because they have been increasingly mixed with more potent products such as fentanyl.
Daniel Tran's placard was placed next to another all too familiar to Tran.
"The picture next to my brother is my friend's little brother," she said.
This is my purpose
Kendyce Rupe says she has "survivors guilt" because she knows all too well that hers could have been among the many names and faces displayed.
"I had 32 years of on and off active drug use," she said as she stood near the display.
Three years recovered, she now works for the Erie County Health Department as a Peer Navigator.
"A Peer Navigator is a fancy term for someone with lived experience," she said. "So I can speak to someone who is an active user ... I can say to them that I know how they feel ... because I'm not a textbook, but real person."
Moreover, she is someone who knows the way out...and whose purpose now, is to help others find that path.
"Maybe this is the plan all along, and this is what I'm supposed to do with my life ... and I owe it to these families," she said.
The display also provides a timeline from the start of the opioid crisis with information on signs noting developments in the fight against opioid abuse and the number deaths each year.
They indicated numerically on the signs, and symbolically by the placement of a commensurate number of small purple flags in the in grass below them.
The last sign lists the number 2,749 which is the total of confirmed overdose deaths in the county since 2009 to date.
That number, is approximately nine times the number placards on display, which were only put up if approved by the survivors of those "taken too soon".
The placards were taken down following the ceremony Thursday evening and organizers said that was because the placards are not resistant to dampness.
They are expected to be erected again next year.
Most likely, and most unfortunately, with additional names.